Negative thoughts
Photo by Michael Hardy on Unsplash
My mind would not stop talking to me this afternoon.
You see, I ordered a multi-tiered plant stand for my office a few weeks ago. If you’re like me, video calls have become a staple in your work life. And in a moment of inspiration (insanity?), I decided a multi-tiered plant stand would look great behind me as I sat on those video calls.
But this multi-tiered plant stand came in one million pieces with one million screws. So as I sat there wrestling with an Allen wrench for an hour, my mind was in a completely different space, uncoupled from the task at hand.
I had talked to a friend earlier in the day. She offered to reconnect me with an old colleague who might have some consulting opportunities. My work is a delicate balance between staying engaged in the work for current clients while keeping my eyes open for other opportunities.
So while my hands were occupied, I had a nonstop stream of words running through my head. And none of them were good.
Nothing will come of this.
That old colleague will never remember you.
Even if he does remember you, he will be very unimpressed with the work you’ve done since you parted ways.
You better not get your hopes up, you know how that always turns out.
And I sat there, drowning in these terrible, mean, unnecessary thoughts. Listening to them like they were true and valid points. Uh huh, I mentally nodded along, thanks for pointing that out. You’re right.
I accepted these thoughts until I reached a point where my heart started jumping around. I wanted to blot out all my feelings with a giant chocolate chip scone. I made my way to the kitchen to discover, for better or worse, my 10 year old had finished the scones before I had the chance.
My scone expedition thwarted, I decided to try to manage the thoughts instead of trying to blot them out.
I have done a lot of research on this topic, because I have had negative thought spirals for most of my life. So I used a few of the things that I know are proven to work.
Separate the Facts From Your Brain’s Projections
Often when I first hear those negative thoughts in my head, I don’t even realize what is happening. That I am spiraling. I assume that the voice in my head is simply reporting the news.
So for me, the first action to take is a step back and say, wait a minute, are these true facts going through my head? Or have I gone down a rabbit hole on this topic?
When I am in the vortex, I am doing what psychologists call rumination. According to Kambara, et al, rumination is:
…conscious thoughts that revolve around and recur to an intrusive [extent] that indicates a discrepancy between current state and ideal outcome.
In other words, I am fixated on what happened and how it isn’t exactly what I wanted to happen.
In my case, I wasn’t focusing on my version of a previous event. Instead, I was ruminating on all the possible future negative outcomes and possibilities.
But that was an important distinction to recognize. I thought I was passively accepting as the news. What I was actually listening to was my brain anxiously filling the space between the present moment and the unknown future.
Scientists call this abstract processing versus concrete processing. According to Watkins et al, 2015, abstract processing means
focus on causes, meanings, implications, significance, and consequences of feelings and events
(And by the way, this comes from an article called …Heightened Ruminative Disposition is Characterized by Increased Emotional Extrapolation. Which means if you overthink like me, you’re going to whip yourself into a frenzy trying to predict the future).
What these researchers propose is instead to shift your thoughts to concrete processing. This is a focus on:
Direct, detailed concrete experience and the mechanics of how such events occur.
Which is to say, what actually happened? What parts of the story I’m telling myself are empirically true?
If I focus on the factual events that occurred, they are: 1) I spoke to a friend, 2) she brought up an old colleague and offered to re-connect us, 3) I said that would be great.
Nothing else happened.
It is true that there were networking opportunities in the past that did not end with a new consulting gig. So my brain focused on using that data to extrapolate what would surely happen again this time.
I love to use old patterns to apply them to future events, but the truth is, my mind is not a fortune teller. I don’t actually have any facts to tell me what will go on in that old colleague’s mind when he hears my name. Or what will happen after that.
Focusing on the concrete, it allows me to retell the story at least in a neutral way. This is what happened. The uncertainty of the unknown future might still provide me with some angst. But at least I can piece apart what is really going on and stop beating myself up for what might happen but hasn’t actually occurred.
Find Something To Organize
This one is tricky for me. I do find organization very soothing. Studies show that exerting some control over your space can help you feel as if you have some control in the world. As Dr. Ethan Kross wrote in his new book Chatter: The Voice In Our Head, Why It Matters, and How To Harness It:
When we experience chatter, we often feel as if we are losing control. Our thought spirals control us rather than the other way around. When this happens, you can boost your sense of control by imposing order on your surroundings.
There are some members of my family that take organizing to what is probably an unhealthy extreme. As a way of coping with their anxiety. So I know first hand that, like any tool, this one can go too far. But I also know that I have a healthy relationship with organizing.
With the plant stand completed, I started organizing my office space. I hadn’t done that since the start of the pandemic. I enjoyed throwing away the snowdrifts of old papers and putting some of my books in order by color (something I had previously only seen on Instagram). And the activity redirected my thoughts from a negative sprial to a feeling of accomplishment. Sometimes it’s nice to have tangible results. And the truth is, it took about 20 minutes.
I think the plant stand turned out pretty well, don’t you? And in the end, setting it up was very satisfying.
Seek Out Nature — Even If Its Only In Photos
There is a lot of clinical and anecdotal evidence that exposure to the outdoors — sunlight and nature — have a positive impact on mood.
But there is also research to show that exposure to nature reduces rumination. Even if it’s only looking at photos or videos online.
In a study by Beute et al called Stopping the Train of Thought: A Pilot Study Using An Ecological Momentary Intervention with Twice-Daily Exposure to Natural Versus Urban Scenes to Lower Stress and Rumination , they found that showing people a 3 minute slideshow of nature photos twice a day decreased worrying and rumination. So the photos alone were enough to calm people’s mental spirals.
My particular thought spiral took place at the end of the day, once it was already dark. But I am a regular runner, and had already planned a run the following morning. I am fortunate to live in a place where I have easy access to nature and the outdoors and use them frequently as a way to calm myself and boost my mood. But the study shows that even photos would be helpful if you don’t have the same kind of access.
In the end I was able to use my tools to pull out of the thought spiral. I was able to set my mind’s focus aside and move on to the rest of my evening. I stepped back and teased out the facts from my projections and I organized my space.
Nothing is foolproof, and I will likely revisit this topic in my mind at some point soon. But I know what helps me calm the tornado in my mind. It will never be perfect, and I will never completely stop ruminating. But acknowledging what is going on and actively trying to find a way to stop the cycle go a long way. They bring my mind space back to the present moment. They help me acknowledge the good right in front of me. Instead of the bad that might happen in a murky, uncertain future.
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